


Good Grief

by neverweremine



Series: More Spider Than Man [5]
Category: Ultimate Spider-Man (Cartoon 2012)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, implications of suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28283580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverweremine/pseuds/neverweremine
Summary: "I'm sorry," he said, the words strange and foreign on his tongue, "that I broke the promise to you… my 'best friend'."
Series: More Spider Than Man [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1876846
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	Good Grief

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Phoebe_Bumbleflip](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoebe_Bumbleflip/gifts).



[MAN-SPIDER]

[30 MINUTES POST-NORMAN'S DEATH]

"You promised. You promised you'd save him and now he's- he's dead." The hatchling wailed against his chest, his tiny fists no match for the Spider's exoskeleton. Weak. He could've torn into the boy for his betrayal if he wanted to, webbed him up, and eaten him, but he did not.

"I saved you," the Spider pointed out between punches. "The Octopus would've come after you next. We're free." Didn't the boy get it? They no longer had masters. No Goblin or Octopus to command them. Why did he fight so hard for someone who'd only trapped him, observed him from far away like a spider to a fly?

The hatchling slowed his punches and laughed, but it was akin to the shattering of stained glass. "God, I wanted to be free but not like this." He shook his head, tears running rivers down his face and mucus hanging from his nose. "Not like this. We're not free, we're- we're alone. We're all alone. I'm alone," he said, as if stumbling upon a divine revelation. "Oh god, we left them behind. Ava and Luke and—" his breath stuttered, "—and Danny and Sam, we left them behind."

Fresh tears leaked out of the boy's eyes and he fell to his knees, clenched fists dragging down the Spider's abdomen, "We left them to die."

He didn't get it. Why was the boy so distraught? Of course they had to leave the others behind, they were too heavy and now the Octopus had weaker prey to occupy him. And how could they be alone? The Spider had the boy and the boy had the Spider. That wasn't alone.

Blue eyes slipped close. A thin chest struggled with breaths that came too short and lungs that went too fast. It reminded the Spider of large steel walls and too-bright lights. It reminded him of the cathedral, the way the boy's hands shook as he held the power to remake him again, if only he plunged the syringe in. He crouched until they were eye level again and thought of small mercies.

"You promised you'd save him, Peter."

That name again. Peter. The Goblin instructed him to find Peter, a task he thought he'd fulfilled but failed.

"Who is Peter?"

"You are. You're Peter. My best friend. You're Peter and I'm Harry and you promised."

The Spider was Peter? But that made no sense. Why did the Goblin ask for Peter if he was Peter? Did he not know he was Peter? Perhaps whatever the Octopus did made him unrecognizable to them both. If he was Peter, then…

"I'm sorry," he said, the words strange and foreign on his tongue, "that I broke the promise to you… my 'best friend'."

The words did not soothe the boy. "Sorry doesn't bring my dad back from the dead."

His pedipalps clicked in rapid succession. "What do you want from me?"

"I want my actual best friend back! I want my- my dad to be human and not dead! I want home!"

Home. A curious word. Did the Spider have a home? He tried to imagine it, but all he could conjure was an image of the cathedral, the people passing below the window, colored by stained glass. He dug deeper; shackles against his limbs, the burn of his body as he transformed, thousands of faces flashing by as the Octopus laughed.

The Octopus. This was his fault.

"I'll kill the Octopus for you. He was the one who took the Goblin and Peter from you—"

"No!" The boy shouted, his eyes slamming open, red-rimmed and still wet with tears. "No more blood! No more killing! I can't take it. I don't want—"

He began crying again, quieter this time, as if anything more than these silent tears would tear him asunder. The Spider reached out but hesitated. He was a monster. This boy… was not. He tried to be. He tried to lure the dark goo that coated the Octopus' body to join him and become a monster of his own, but he could not sway it, and it jumped off the boy's body as if repelled. 'You are not a monster,' the goo seemed to say as it left the boy bereft. 'You are not vicious enough. Not angry enough.'

The Spider was a monster, this he knew. The boy was not. The Spider reached out and wondered if he touched for too long, will he be repelled back too?

Well, the only way to know is to try.

One furred finger brushed against the boy's cheek, catching water as it fell. The hatchling shuddered but did not flinch. Whatever fear he'd held for the Spider had been replaced by grief and anger and exhaustion that settled bone-deep. He waited for retribution but none came and so, emboldened with time, he cradled his arms around the boy and began rocking. Back and forth. Gently.

"Leave me alone," the hatchling moaned, "Leave me to die. Eat me, for all I care. Just make it quick."

"I will not eat you," he hushed. "I will not let you die."

"Like you weren't going to let dad die?"

His pedipalps clicked in a flurry of dissatisfaction. The boy — Harry — couldn't live in abject misery and grief forever. He needed food and water, and he needed to trust the Spider could provide them. He didn't know why it was so important or where these feelings of protectiveness stemmed from, but they flowered in his chest and the Spider hadn't the energy to pull them by the roots.

"Go to sleep, Harry," he murmured against the boy's temple. "Go to sleep. Everything will be fine. I'll take care of it."

And, strangely, Harry slept.

[MARY JANE WATSON]

[2 HOURS POST-NORMAN'S DEATH]

MJ sighed as she scrolled her phone. It was nearing 11, and she knew she should head to bed or else risk sleeping through tomorrow's alarm, but the call from earlier gnawed at her. Harry's voice, his words clipped and panicked, had shaken her, but then Ava had come over the phone reassuring her he was only worked up because of a scary movie marathon. Whose bright idea was to have a horror marathon on a school night, anyway? Ava's words had placated her. It wasn't the first time Harry called her with wild delusions from horror nights, but now…

She should check on him.

It was a matter of seconds to call Harry, but the call tone droned on with no answer. He couldn't be asleep yet, could he? Harry never slept easy when spooked, and he spooked easy. He could've turned his phone off... Yeah, his phone was off. That's why he wasn't answering.

The unease in her gut widened.

After a minute, MJ was ready to call it quits and head to bed, but then the call tone ended. Someone picked up.

"Hey, Harry," she said, "How'd the movie marathon go? Just thought I'd check in before I head to bed for the night. You know, making sure you're all right and didn't lock yourself in the safe room. Again."

A series of clicks filled her ears, like the cluck of a tongue but snappier. "Who is this?" intoned a voice MJ had never heard, gruff and low and raw enough to tickle her from the top of her spine to the coarse skin of her heels.

"It's MJ. I'm friends with Harry? Where's Harry? Is he okay?" She lifted herself to her elbows and turned on her lamp beside the bed.

"Harry's here," stated the voice and nothing more.

"Where's Ava?" She was there, wasn't she? She said they were watching movies together. Maybe this was Ava's friend that MJ had never heard of.

"Who is Ava?"

MJ kicked off her blankets and jumped to her feet as a thousand terrible possibilities washed over her like icy water. "Listen here," she said, "you either put Harry on the phone in the next five seconds, or else you're going to regret it. I'm not joking around here. If you don't do as I say, I'll- I'll-"

"He's asleep," the voice stated in a tone so simple it could be reassuring. It wasn't.

"Put him on or so help me—"

Miraculously, she could hear Harry in the backdrop, voice groggy as if he had been asleep. Or drugged. "Who's that?"

"An… 'MJ'. Do you want me to destroy the device?"

"No! Let me—"

There was a scramble, a rustling, but not a fight, and then: "MJ," breathed Harry. Except even through the phone she could tell something was amiss. His voice cracked against her ear, dry and drained. Empty. "They're gone," he said without preamble. "They're all gone."

"What? Who?"

"Ava and Sam and Luke and Danny. And Peter… Peter's gone too."

He must've woken from an awful dream. Yes, they forced him to watch too many horror movies and now she'd woken him from a nightmare. That's all this was.

"It's, like, 11 at night, they probably went home — and Peter's doing that Stark Industries thing, remember?"

"No!" She winced and pulled the phone from her ears at Harry's shout. "No, Peter… They lied. Peter was Spider-Man and now he's some kind of… some kind of Man-Spider and Ava is White Tiger and Sam is—" his breath hitched and she could hear the sob in his throat from here, "—and, and they're gone. We left them behind. We left them—"

"Breathe," Harry. Listen to me. Breathe. Inhale and hold it in for four. 1...2...3...4. Exhale. 1...2...3...4. Inhale for four again." She did the breathing along with him as she paced the length of her bedroom. "Now repeat it to me again. What's going on?"

"They're superheroes. Always have been." In the clearest voice since he picked up, he began saying the craziest thing she'd ever heard.

"Peter was Spider-Man. Ava is White Tiger. Sam is Nova. Luke is Powerman. Danny is Iron Fist. They — the Octopus guy. The, I forget his actual name, the guy who kept wrecking the penthouse and transformed my da — made the Green Goblin. He… He captured Pete and made him into that thing I saw yesterday. The thing that broke into the penthouse with the six arms and eight eyes and- and the fur. And there was a fight, and we had to leave them behind. We left them to die." He sobbed then, long and unbroken except for sniffles that MJ knew from experience met long snot trails.

Suddenly, it felt as if she was the one in a nightmare. She kept pacing the room, but the more rounds she did, the more the room shrunk, boxing her in. The lamp had given light, but it had also cast shadows where monsters lurked; the cup of pens and pencils on her desk manifesting claws on her wall that moved every time she turned. Her clock said 11:12, but was it? Time slipped past her, growing blurry and indistinct, akin to a long night at the hospital or a trip to the convenience store in the early twilight hours.

She tugged the curtains from her windows and opened the blinds, half-certain meteors painted the sky red, but… no. It was the same neighborhood she'd always grown up in. Same landscape. Same architecture. Across the way sat Peter's house, as it always did. The lights were on in the kitchen. She realized then. Did Aunt May know she was housing five super teens? Was she waiting for them now, ready to scold them for superheroing out so late, or did she have no clue where any of her wards were?

What were they going to tell her?

"He's dead," said Harry, pulling MJ from her contemplations. For a second, she thought she'd misheard.

"What?"

"He's dead," repeated Harry in a voice so distant and empty, it spread over the airwaves and froze her solid. "Dad's dead. The octopus guy killed him. He—" his voice broke, and the words rushed forward. "He got stabbed in the chest again and again and- and he's dead." A pause. Outside, a raccoon raced across her driveway.

Norman was dead. Harry saw it. What did that mean? What does it mean for Oscorp and Harry, who was nowhere near ready to take over his father's empire? What does it mean for OsTower and Harry's home? In the uncertain grey legal section of 'CEO turned hideous monster', they had let Harry continue his life, going to Midtown and living at the tower, but now that he was dead… Everything Harry had could come crumbling, Midtown and the penthouse and…

Harry must have had similar thoughts of his bleak future because it wasn't long until MJ heard several thumps and thuds; a frantic struggle that consumed the night with desperation. "Let me go!" yelled Harry. "Let me go! I don't want to- I don't want to live like this. I can't live like this—" A pitiful wail echoed in her ears, raw and heartbroken and lonely.

"You're going to hurt yourself," stated the voice from earlier. A voice she still did not know.

"Harry, who is that with you? Where are you? Harry, are you safe?"

More rustling. The clicking sound from earlier, but more clipped. And then... nothing. She stared at her phone in horror, but it had gone back to her home screen. Call ended. She called again, but no one answered. She redialed. Again. And again. And again. Nothing.

She breathed in for four. Exhaled for four. Breathed in again. It was nearing half until midnight. She had school tomorrow.

MJ rushed to her closet and swore to herself, grabbing her trusty leather jacket and worn blue jeans.

"You better not do anything dumb before I get to you, Har," she swore as she grabbed her trusty bat and pepper spray. Now to sneak past her parents...

[AVA AYALA]

[3 DAYS POST-NORMAN'S DEATH]

"What. Happened?"

Waking in a hospital bed was never pleasant, doubly so when your teammate refused to tell you the details or meet your eyes. Luke had on his civvies, a large hoodie and dark jeans, which meant she had to have been out for a while, but he refused to say how long.

"Here, I'll call the nurse to check up on you and while that's happening, I'll call the guys. Tell them you're awake." He still couldn't meet her eyes. Why couldn't he meet her eyes? The heartbeat monitor began beating at closer and closer intervals. Just how badly did they mess up?

She opened her mouth to ask, but Luke rushed out of the room without a single look back.

.

By the time the nurse came in and did their checkup, she had gone through every moment of that night. The Green Goblin, the claw marks that barely scratched tough hide, the kicks that landed with little to no impact, the worn ache as her body collided with her teammates'... and then the surprise. Otto Octavius, injected with what could only be a new symbiote Osborn created. It was hopeless, one symbiote arm stopping her before she could throw a punch and another lifting her off the ground, spinning her topsy-turvy before throwing her into a wall.

They lost. They had to have lost if Luke couldn't meet her eyes, which meant they failed Peter. Again.

The nurse left with the IV stand and the order to stay in bed until the doctor came around for a more thorough checkup, and with her exit came the re-entrance of her teammates. Her severely injured and beaten-up teammates. Thanks to his invulnerable skin, Luke had no visible injuries, but Danny had a bandage wrapped around his head and mottled bruises across his face while Sam's left leg was mummified in a cast, a bruise the size of a peach staining the underside of his chin. They looked terrible. She had a not-so-bold suspicion that she looked little better.

"Here," said Danny, holding a bowl of oatmeal, "I asked the nursed and she said you can have this."

"I'm not hungry," she stated.

Danny, being Danny, ignored her and fiddled with the hospital bed's controls until he forced her upright and began setting up the tray for her. "Ava, you haven't eaten actual food in three days. You need to eat."

"Three days!?"

They winced.

"Explain," she said, grabbing the nearest person, Sam, and digging her nails in. "No more hiding."

"Well," Luke dragged a hand through his hair and pulled up the chair he was using earlier, "They found us at around midnight. We were still in the cathedral and it was empty… Or, at least, it was empty by the time I woke up. They had dragged away the body by then."

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Luke did most of the talking while Danny pestered her to eat until she gave in, grabbing bites of lumpy oatmeal between statements of their horrible failure. Sam was quiet the entire time, his gaze far away.

"... Hopefully, we'll find them soon. SHIELD already issued an APB for Octavius from here to the west coast, but so far there's been no sighting."

Ava closed her eyes. Three people missing. One person dead. One supervillain still out there, causing chaos and havoc. They could be in the same place, under Octavius' microscope, tortured and forced to partake in horrible experiments. They could be nowhere near each other, having escaped in the heat of battle and hiding out, waiting for rescue.

("For three days?" asked the logical part of Ava's brain. "Unlikely. They're captured or they're dead—" No, no, no. Don't think that. Don't go there—)

"Dammit!" she said. She banged her fist against the railings, the sorry excuse for a bowl of oatmeal jumping in its tray. They could be anywhere. They could be pickled organs in a jar for all they knew.

A hand landed on her clenched fists. Danny smiled at her, but it fell at the corners. "What's done is done," he said. "We must now look only towards the future." He lifted the oatmeal at her enticingly, but whatever spare appetite she had left her as nausea overtook her.

"Is there anything else I should know?"

"Fury wants to talk to us," stated Sam. He itched at his cast before he recognized the useless gesture for what it was and stilling his arms. "He said it was important but to wait until you recovered before—"

"Whoa, hey! You shouldn't be getting up!" Luke was at her side at an instant as she pushed the tray aside and climbed the railing. His hands hovered at her elbows, but he didn't restrain her. Good. Ava would hate to have to claw his eyes out.

"Danny, get me some clothes to change into," she said as she felt the breeze hit her backside through her thin hospital gown. He nodded and darted off.

"What are you doing?" asked Sam. He didn't sound alarmed like Luke. He didn't sound much of anything.

"First, I'm going to change into some real clothes, then I'm going to march to Fury's office and figure out what's our next game plan."

.

SHIELD agents shot them nervous glances on their march to the director's office, but luckily no one dared stop them. One nurse offered a wheelchair, but Sam had refused it, keeping his clutches. Ava probably needed clutches too, but she made do with limping and leaning on Luke.

Fury, of course, knew they were coming. The doors to his office opened before they could knock, revealing an unimpressed director. "What's the meaning of this?"

Ava straightened and walked in first. She was a smidge wobbly without Luke's support, but she was a SHIELD recruit and she knew how to take a soldier's stance. "We heard you wanted to talk to us, Director Fury."

"I believe my instructions stated after you recovered."

"Well, we're here now, sir."

There was a stare-down. There was always a stare-down post-misconstrued orders. The key was to show no fear or regret. After the ritual was complete, he sighed and gestured to the chairs surrounding his desk. Ava took hers gratefully and took careful even breaths to lower her racing heart rate.

"Well, since you're here and so eager to talk," Fury stood from his desk and faced them with a quelling glance, "Let's go over what went wrong, shall we?"

It was odd, getting a lecture from Fury in their civvies. The lack of uniform, SHIELD-issued or otherwise, made her feel more vulnerable as, for the next hour, Fury forced them to recount everything from OsTower, to under the streets of New York, to the maintenance tunnels under Stark Tower. He drilled them for every detail, made them relive every mistake. By the time they reached the cathedral, they were proverbially bleeding out and every tongue lashing was a squeezed lemon on the wound. It was humiliating, suffocating, demoralizing—

It was what they deserved.

"So you didn't notice Octavius getting injected or getting up?"

"No, sir," said Danny. "We were focused on fighting Green Goblin."

"Focused on Goblin or not, you should've been damn aware of your surroundings!" barked Fury. "You four became so dependent on Spider-Man's spider-sense you forgot about using your own senses. We're going to work on that. When you've recovered, you're going to run training scenarios until you can focus on ten A-list opponents at once. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, sir," they said.

"And you're going to be off duty for a month post-recovery. That means no patrols, no putting on the costume—"

"A month!?" He couldn't be serious. Peter couldn't wait a month. "We can't wait that long! We're- We have to find Peter. We can't leave him hanging for that long."

"That's another thing, you four are off the mission. You are not allowed to search for Otto Octavius or Spider-Man, and if I find you snooping, you'll find yourself off duty for a lot longer than a month. Effective immediately."

Ava leaped to her feet, and behind her, she could hear Danny and Luke do the same. Only Sam, next to her, remained seated, his grip tight on his clutches.

"To what end?" asked Danny.

"Whoa, hold up. What?" said Luke.

"You can't do this!" shouted Ava.

"I can and I will and I did. Now sit your asses back down."

None of them moved.

"For how long?" asked Sam.

"Permanently," stated Fury.

Another round of protests went up, stronger than the last. It was only when Fury slammed his palms against his desk that they quieted. "It took all your concentration to fight the Goblin and you didn't even win. It only took a matter of minutes to K.O. you and kill the Goblin. I can't, in good conscience, send you after him."

"We can do it," pleaded Ava. "You know we can. We'll train harder, do better, take backup with us. We can save him," she said and willed it to be true. "We can find Peter and save him. He would do no less for us. You know he wouldn't."

"That's the problem, you're too attached, you don't have the perspective necessary to approach this with a clear mind."

"He's our teammate," Luke said in a voice that begged for sympathy.

"He was."

It was Danny who understood first. He said it quietly, a simple statement of fact, but it rebounded off the walls and became too loud in her ears. "You're not thinking of saving him, are you?"

Silence. Fury closed his eyes and breathed deep through his nose. It was like a thousand nightmares rolled into one. SHIELD, the organization that she signed up with, that promised law and order that she gladly abided by, was… was telling her...

"Why?" she asked, hating how her voice cracked on the single syllable.

"This wasn't a simple decision." Wasn't. As in, he'd decided. As in, no measure of needling and begging could sway him. He pressed a few buttons on his keypad and a TV monitor descended from the ceiling, pictures prepped on the big screen.

"Point 1. Do you recognize this?" Fury asked. It was a rhetorical question. "This is the basement of Stark Tower. You see these doors?"

He pointed at the crumpled doors, five of them, two laid completely off their hinges, three with holes big enough for an eight-limbed human to walk through. "These are reinforced, StarkTec-patented bomb shelter doors designed to let nothing in or out. He went through these in minutes. Not even Spider-Man can get through these, part of the reason Connors recommended the location, but whatever Octavius did doubled his strength. At least. The only thing that could've torn through those doors faster is an angry Hulk."

"Point 2," Fury continued. "As you tell it, the reason Spider-Man kidnapped Harry Osborn was to find 'Peter', correct?" A pause. He expected them to answer this time.

"Yes, sir," said Ava.

"He doesn't even recognize his name or his best friend. If there were signs that he was cognizant of his situation, it would be a different story. Whatever Octavius did Spider-Man, it's more than cosmetic, it's mental. Psychological. SHIELD is tasked with maintaining both national and global security. We'll try to do what we can, but if the situations calls for lethal action, then we will do what's necessary."

"What's necessary?" burst out Sam. "What happened to capturing him, trying to get him to turn back? We can still do that, can't we?"

"Which brings us to my final point. That's before Connors went MIA. Dr. Connors was our leading scientist on biochemical engineering with a keen insight on Octavius' methods from their time together at grad school. Without him to decipher what Octavius' methods, the chances of turning Spider-Man back got drop-kicked out the window."

"So you gave up?" asked Ava.

"I am not giving up, I am only honoring what Peter would have wanted."

"HE'S NOT DEAD," roared Sam with such a ferocity that even Fury seemed taken aback. "Webhead's not dead, so stop talking like he is. And shut up about honor. Where's the honor in killing a teammate? A student? A—" his Adam's apple bobbed, "—a friend?"

Sam gripped his clutches like a lifeline, his eyes watering but no tears spilling. Danny reached over to pat his shoulder, but Sam only shrugged it off and shrunk in on himself.

"Let me ask you all this: if Peter were here and he could, which would he pick? Continue living if it meant putting people in danger or dying but making sure no one got hurt?"

The answer was a no-brainer.

Nobody answered.

"What about Aunt May?" asked Sam. "What — are you going to say he's at Stark Industries forever? And what about us? Are we supposed to go back and pretend everything's all right? We can't- We can't go back."

"You're right. You can't. There's a higher chance than not that Dr. Octavius ferreted out Spider-Man's ID during experimentation, and thus, we've been keeping a careful watch on May Parker. In the interest of respecting his wishes of keeping Spider-Man separate from his personal life, Miss Parker is currently under the impression that her nephew is still on the Stark Industries tour while inside the comfort of her own home. Whether or not that will hold depends."

Fury's voice softened, but it was too much. It was trying to cushion an anvil with a single pillowcase. "Because of this, you're moving out, effective immediately. We've assigned you to special barracks in the triskelion until we can find more appropriate lodgings for you."

Tears leaked from Sam's eyes. Ava wasn't far behind.

Somehow, in less than a week and a half, her life had turned into a nightmare.

[DR. CURT CONNORS]

[A WEEK POST-NORMAN'S DEATH]

After listening to Peter's complaints of the lairs Octavius favored: dark and damp and with a stench that could knock Wolverine on his ass, Curt had half-expected a dark sewer or an abandoned warehouse or something equally dark, damp, and stinky. Except, that wasn't where Otto led him (blindfolded and tied up) to at all.

There were no windows, or at least, if there were, he'd never seen them, but there were sun lamps and lights that mimicked the day/night cycle; they had no water leakage problems and, after several showers, baths, and a very memorable buzz-cut, the only thing that stunk was the chemicals they were working with. So yes, nothing close to what he was expecting. Every room Curt had entered during the day cycle was bright and clean. Every room except one.

"This is unethical."

"Of course it is, what did you expect after I _kidnapped_ you?"

Curt shook his head. In the week he'd been here, he'd been working on reversing the damaging effects Otto's paralysis had on him. The symbiote may have given Otto use of his body back and even made it so he could swing a fist with the power of a gorilla behind it, but his muscles were still atrophied from disuse, his posture poor enough that he still had to use his tentacles to walk, his teeth… Well, the less said of his teeth, the better. He had thought he'd work on studying the symbiote in tandem with Octavius' biochemistry and see what helped, but now he realized Octavius had more nefarious plans for him.

"What even is the purpose? Just to say you can?"

"The purpose, Connors, is to defeat my enemies once and for all."

"Enemies? You've already killed Osborn and made Spider-Man into a monster, what more is there? Who else wronged you?"

There was no answer. From inside the pitch-black room came a gentle red glow and the sound of bubbles. Octavius pushed him in without care for the one-armed scientist still trying to balance on uneven weight distribution. He fell to the floor with a clatter. "Now get to work," Octavius commanded before sealing him in the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/Neverweremine1)
> 
> Title from the song "Good Grief," by Bastille. Go listen to it!


End file.
